


The Price to Pay

by namizaela



Category: One Piece
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, and trauma, just some adults talking about feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-09 23:03:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20517902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/namizaela/pseuds/namizaela
Summary: Robin and Brook find everything slipping away from them.





	The Price to Pay

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! This is my first (published) One Piece fic so I'm pretty excited! I really do not know what compelled me to write about these two but I'm pretty happy with the result so...enjoy :)

“Can I ask you something, Brook?”

The skeleton nodded, the movement casting shadows against the walls of the crow’s nest. “Of course, Robin. Ask away.”

Robin let her eyes drift to the window. The moon glowed against the sky, and clusters of little white stars scattered across the night. She felt bad, really--Brook was the one on shift, while she wasn’t. She hadn’t known where else to go. 

“What’s it like to live so long?” 

If the question surprised him, he didn’t show it. He simply folded his hands over each other, making a gentle clacking noise. 

“Well, it’s … a lot of things. It’s different for everyone,” he said. “I’m sure you will think the same, when you live to be eighty.”

“If, not when,” she interjected. “We are pirates, you know.”

Brook chuckled. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

They fell into silence for a moment. Brook started humming an old melody, one that Robin was sure he had learned decades ago. His finger tapped out a rhythm on his cane, the bone clicking against the wooden sheath. Brook’s voice was silky and strong, taut and loose all at once from his years of practice. Even when he was only humming, his voice carried throughout the crow’s nest. 

“What’s that song?” Robin asked. 

The humming stopped, and Brook looked at her. For a moment Robin thought he wouldn’t answer. “You know,” he said, “I can’t quite remember the name.”

“Oh.” Brook had been adrift for fifty years. She couldn’t blame him for not remembering one song. “That’s alright. I was just curious.”

Brook paused. “Sometimes I don’t feel like I’m old, but it’s true. My memory is getting worse.”

Robin found that hard to believe. It was on her first real adventure with the Straw Hats, the first one where she could sleep knowing they would still be there in the morning, that she encountered Brook. She heard his story whispered throughout the Sunny. He had been adrift for fifty years, with no one to talk to but the skulls of his former crewmates, smooth and dry because of the harsh sea winds. At that point, how could he turn to anything but his memories? How could he have anything else to live for?

“I used to hum that song all the time on the ship,” Brook said. “I remember the first time that my violin strings snapped, two years after I came back. After accompanying me for so long, the instrument just broke. So I sang this song instead.”

“Where did you learn it?” Robin asked. 

Brook rested his finger on his chin, staying silent for a moment. “I think it was at a bar with Yorki. The rest of the crew had gone to bed, but he and I were sober enough to stay conscious. I started humming a tune, and he started singing, although you know how bad his voice is, right?” Brook sighed in remembrance, and Robin thought it unwise to remind him that Yorki died long before she was born. No use repeating to him that he was the sole bearer of his memories.

“So that tune belonged to the two of you,” she said. “It must remind you of him.”

Brook nodded. “And now I can’t remember the name.”

“I’m sorry.”

Brook looked at her. “Don’t be,” he said. “It’s a surprise I remember anything anymore, since I don’t have a brain!”

Despite the solemn mood, Robin laughed a little. She relaxed her shoulders and sank into the plush leather seats of the crow’s nest. A seagull let out a cry in the night. 

“It seems I don’t have time to reminisce as much anymore,” Brook said. “Ever since Luffy came along, all I was able to do was try to stay alive.”

A smile perked up Robin’s lips. “Well, of course,” she said. “He really knows how to keep us occupied, doesn’t he?”

“But that also means I let things slip. Even if I don’t want them to.”

“Like the song?”

“Yes,” Brook said. He paused, and Robin’s sure that if he had lips he would be biting them. “And other things. Like Laboon’s call.”

Robin paused for a moment, trying to recall who exactly Laboon was, then remembered. 

“Oh,” she said. “Well, I’m sure Luffy remembers--”

“That’s not the point.”

Robin sighed, then looked at Brook. “No. It isn’t.”

There was a time when she was like Brook, too. Every night she spent in a stranger’s house, praying that they wouldn’t turn her over to the government, she let Ohara’s death play over and over in her mind. She had broken, soundless images of the library burning, her neighbors bleeding out on the grass. Of her mother squeezing against her, whispering rushed confessions in her ear. Robin would often wake up in tears, but she didn’t mind. It was proof that she was alive.

“Can I tell you something, Brook?”

“Certainly.”

Robin looked at the wooden floor. “I don’t know what my mother looked like.”

Brook paused, and the two of them let that confession hang in the air. He cleared his throat. “Didn’t she...raise you?” he asked. 

“No,” Robin said. “She spent my whole childhood searching for the Poneglyphs. She came back right before the Buster Call.”

Robin didn’t say what happened after that, but she knew Brook understood. His skeletal fingers wrapped around his cane. “I’m very sorry to hear that.”

“It’s strange, because the moment I met her, everything clicked. When she told me she was proud of me, I cherished those words deeply. But I didn’t think to remember her face.”

“I see.”

“The only thing I remembered was--” Robin paused to swallow the lump in her throat, “was how nobody had ever held me as close as she did. And how she smelled like smoke, and how her eyes were as blue as mine but watery because of the tears.” She carefully avoided looking at Brook. She was sure he didn’t want to see her crying. “Nobody ever held me like she did.”

A few moments passed where both of them sat in silence. Robin sniffled a few times, staring fixedly at the floor. She dabbed at the corners of her eyes, then turned to Brook. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do this.”

Brook was looking kindly at her, or at least as kindly as any skull could look. “It’s alright.”

“Most of the time I can focus on our adventures with Luffy,” she said. “But, well, it’s the middle of the night. And...my mind doesn’t know what else to turn to.”

“I understand,” Brook said. “Sometimes that’s the price we have to pay.”

Yes, Robin thought. The price to pay for other’s sins. Anger briefly flared up in her, but she took a deep breath and stood. Turning to Brook, she smiled. “Thank you for keeping me company.”

“It was my pleasure, Robin.” His silhouette was comfortingly still in the night. Nowhere to go but here, she thought.

Robin didn’t intend to sleep, but it didn’t matter. She would make herself a cup of coffee, open a book, and wait for the sun to come up. It was a practiced ritual, one she employed on nights like this. She walked over to the ladder.

“Robin?”

She paused. “Yes?”

“I’d like to think we have a future,” Brook said. “We have to carry whatever is left with us, even if it’s only a melody. Or the pressure of an embrace. We must, even if it hurts to remember. Because it hurts even more to let go.”

Robin felt something deep well up inside of her. She wanted to believe nothing would change, that she could always stay like this and go on adventures with everyone. That she would always have someone standing vigil in the night. She wanted this moment, and every moment before it, to endure in her mind forever. 

She looked at Brook, eyes tender. “I know,” she said softly. “I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Find me on tumblr @namizaela if you want. I hope to write more One Piece fics in the future!


End file.
